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Iowa News

Nuclear cargo hits Iowa
07/06/2001

By William Petroski

Des Moines Register

The federal government secretly sent a convoy of three trucks hauling nuclear waste through southwest Iowa last week, state officials confirmed Tuesday.

The radioactive cargo was placed in heavily protected containers built to withstand crashes without leaking, said Tom Sever, hazardous materials coordinator for the Iowa Department of Transportation. The convoy was escorted by a state hazardous materials specialist and passed through Iowa without incident, he said.

Sever said there have been five to six shipments of significant amounts of radioactive materials through Iowa this year and about 150 to 200 such shipments over the past decade. Some of the convoys have passed through the Des Moines area on Interstate Highway 80, he said.

The recent convoy crossed the Missouri state line into southwest Iowa on Thursday and headed north on Interstate Highway 29, Sever said. Upon reaching the Council Bluffs and Omaha area, the trucks followed a circuitous route in which they headed northeast on Interstate Highway 80 to Interstate Highway 680, then west into Nebraska around the most populous parts of the metro area.

The radioactive waste came from a German nuclear reactor plant, Sever said.

The convoy traveled through the United States on the interstate highway system from South Carolina to the U.S. Department of Energy's National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory in Idaho.

Lisa Cutler, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Energy in Washington, D.C., said spent nuclear fuel is sent to the United States from research reactors in foreign countries to make certain it will not be used to produce nuclear weapons. Uranium in the spent fuel was originally enriched in the United States, she said.

Federal energy officials work with state and local officials to determine the best and safest routes for transporting nuclear waste, Cutler said.

The timing of such shipments is not disclosed to the public for security reasons, she said. The shipments are monitored by a satellite tracking system.

Ellen Gordon, administrator of the Iowa Division of Emergency Management, said her agency has done extensive planning on public safety in the event of an accident involving such convoys. State public health experts also have been involved.

"We have made a really strong effort over the last few years to equip and train first responders," Gordon said. Those first responders include regional hazardous materials teams.

Kevin Kamps, a spokesman for the Nuclear Information and Resource Service in Washington, D.C., said his watchdog group has concerns about the shipment of radioactive waste on interstate highways.

"Just to give some perspective on the radioactive content, these containers hold many times the radiation that was released by the Hiroshima atomic bomb," Kamps said.

He calls such convoys "mobile Chernobyls," referring to a 1986 explosion at a nuclear reactor in Ukraine.

The frequency of such shipments across Iowa could increase dramatically if plans are approved for a proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada, Kamps said.

Jim Johnson of Des Moines, an anti-nuclear activist, thinks the public should be worried about such shipments across Iowa.

He questions whether the shipping containers can withstand a catastrophic accident, and he wonders whether security is sufficient.

"Boy, this would be a big fat target of opportunity for any terrorist," Johnson said.

Cutler said over the past 40 years there have been more than 2,500 shipments of spent nuclear fuel in the United States.

"Although there have been some incidents, there has never been a release of radioactive materials," she said.

There are two types of shipping containers, and both have undergone extensive testing, Cutler said.

One weighs 17 tons and has 9-inch walls. The other weighs 8 tons and has 8½-inch walls. "They are all designed and constructed to retain their contents in the event of an accident," she said.

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